Clustering

Clustering, like listing, is another way to get ideas to write about. You use the same brainstorming technique you have already learned. That is, you write down every word or phrase that pops into your mind about your topic. However, instead of writing them down in a list, you write them in circles, or bubbles, around your topic like this:

Next, think about the word or phrase in each bubble. Then write whatever comes into your mind in smaller bubbles. Also cross out any bubbles that you don't want.

From these clusters or groups of bubbles, you can begin to see which ideas to use and which ones to throw away. Use the clusters that have the most bubbles, and throw away the ones that have few bubbles because they didn't produce many ideas.

You can also see that the word cool appears in several bubbles. This could be the main idea of the paragraph. The cluster lot of work produced several bubbles, but the idea of cool and lot of work are too different to write about in the same paragraph. Therefore, the writer crossed out the bubbles about work in order to concentrate on the idea of cool. The topic sentence might be: Even on a hot summer day, my garden feels cool.

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